Real Estate Boom Threatens Rooming Houses At The Bottom Of The Housing Market

Via WGHB

By: Chris Burrell

A hot real estate market in Boston and surrounding cities is fueling rent hikes and evictions in what has long been one of the cheapest housing options in poor neighborhoods — rooming houses.

Housing advocates say rooming houses — also known as SROs, meaning ‘single room occupancy’ — are a vital source of affordable shelter for minimum-wage workers, the elderly and people with disabilities or mental illness. But as urban real estate values surge, some investors and property owners are raising rents, evicting tenants and trying to shift away from low-income residents.

“People are being thrown out, and that’s happening across the city, because these properties are now so valued,” said Eloise Lawrence, an attorney at Harvard Law School’s Legal Aid Bureau who has defended tenants. “What was once considered housing at the last resort is now seen as desired and profitable.”

It’s not clear whether the number of rooming houses in the Boston area has declined over time, because city agencies don’t keep accurate historical records of such properties, but the New England Center for Investigative Reporting found many cases of rooming houses being sold and tenants displaced or under threat of eviction.

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